Impact of Enhanced in-Hospital Infection Prevention During the COVID-19 Pandemic on Postoperative Pneumonia in Older Surgical Patients

PURPOSE: We aimed to investigate the impact of enhanced in-hospital infection prevention during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on postoperative pneumonia in older surgical patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed the electronic medical records of consecutive patients ≥70 years who underwent elective surgery between 2017 and 2021 at our institution. All perioperative variables were retrieved from the electronic medical records. The primary outcome was new-onset postoperative pneumonia during the hospitalization period. Since February 2020, our institution implemented a series of policies to enhance infection prevention, hence patients were divided into groups according to whether they underwent surgery before or during the COVID-19 pandemic. An interrupted time series analysis was performed to evaluate the difference between pre- and post-intervention slopes of the primary outcome. RESULTS: Among the 29,387 patients included in the study, 10,547 patients underwent surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although there was a decreasing trend of the monthly incidence rate of postoperative pneumonia compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was no statistical significance in the trend (slope before COVID-19 period: β-coefficient, −0.007; 95% CI, −0.022 to 0.007). CONCLUSION: Our study revealed that enhanced in-hospital infection prevention implemented to manage the COVID-19 pandemic did not significantly affect the decreasing trend of postoperative pneumonia at our institution.